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[BigCat]

Hi all,

Hopefully this is the right place to discuss this.

I am interested in how (if?) users use AcoustID or other audio fingerprinting. I have many poorly named songs and want to use audio fingerprinting. Ideally I could use it from inside JRiver. MusicBrainz Picard can be used, but I love, am loyal to, and am more familiar with JRiver. Also, I want any changes made to a file to automatically be "seen" by JRiver.

1) What capabilities does JRiver have? How can it be modified to work with fingerprinting?

2) Is there a way to calculate/record/view/upload MBID (MusicBrainz IDentifier) tags in JRiver?

3) What do people do in general?

4) Are there privacy issues with uploading my own acoustic fingerprints?

Thanks!

[RoderickGI]

1. Jim has told me once that the JRiver YADB lookup does use Acoustic Fingerprinting, but it doesn't use AcousticID. The Album lookup on YADB is pretty good, in that it finds a lot of stuff. But the individual track lookup isn't so good. Basically, you have to take this function outside MC if, like me, you have lots of tracks that are not well identified. In my case, I inherited a music library from my brother, some of which is ripped from vinyl, and it isn't well identified. So I use MusicBrainz Picard.

2. When you use MusicBrainz, the tags it creates are written to ID3v2.3 tags in the file, if you allow MusicBrainz to do that. Those tags are visible in the Tag Dump area of the MC Tag Action Window. See attached image. With some work, including the creation of custom fields in MC, you could have MC import those tags into fields and include them in Views and so on, if required.

3. As above, I have used MusicBrainz Picard for this activity. I initially allowed MB to tag and move the files. MC would then detect the changes and update the Library. But that lead to some issues with Albums being broken up and so on. I haven't done lots for some time, but next time I do I won't allow MC to move the files, and will do that myself using the MC RM&CF function once MB has identified and tagged them correctly. I don't import MB tags into MC, so it gets a bit messy working through multiple copies of the same tracks spread across the folder structure my brother used. He wasn't very consistent. So I can't say the identification process and de-duplication process is very quick or easy. But it works... when I make time to do it.

4. Probably. I haven't read the MusicBrainz Privacy policy since I started using it. I haven't been spammed as a result of using it though. I don't tend to do any updates (edits) of MusicBrainz myself, so it is just the automatic data sharing that MB would be aware of, which is basically Albums/Tracks seen, and maybe by which accounts. They have reasonable privacy settings though.

I think the best thing to do in using MusicBrainz Picard with MC is to work out your workflow in advance, and make sure you configure MB well so that it doesn't do too much, or mess up work you have already done. Once music is correctly identified and tagged, do all your other tagging, moving, and maintenance in MC.

[blgentry]

Maybe I shouldn't even be asking but...

How do you end up with tracks that you don't know what they are?  ...and are they worth having if they never had any identifying information?  I.E., if these are a bunch of 64kpbs downloads from some unknown source, do you really want to keep them?  ...and how many of these could you have that would require acoustic finger printing?

If it's only say... 30 songs, then you could use a tool like Shazam on your phone to ID them and then type in the info.  If it's more than that, I again wonder if they are worth saving and how you would have ended up with them.

I've found similar situations in the past and most of the files like this are just junk.  But maybe your case is different.

Brian.

[BigCat]

Hi RoderickGI and Brian (and everyone else). Thanks for asking.

There are literally several thousand files that need attention. They are a few collections passed on to me from friends, many with marginal tagging. Yeah, some have relatively low bit-rate while others are lossless (I don't have the greatest of music equipment). There are many hard to find old Celtic folk recordings, country, folk, rock, etc. I have many whistling songs in many genres 'cause my bird loves listening to whistling music! I listen to everything from metal and punk to recordings-from-the-beginning-of-recordings. I mostly listen to music using smartlists based on combining various genres. I like to blend all this stuff together and cue up days of music at a time.

I have this idea that I am helping the community by sharing the many album covers that I hunt for with JRiver so others can share in my research by downloading the cover art, too. I was thinking that I could also scan my files to give them AcoustID tags (or something similar) so I could upload the data and other people could benefit in case they have similar files.

You guys help so many people here every day. It was kind of my way doing my part of contributing to the good. Maybe its silly, but some of this music is quite obscure, pretty cool, and took a lot of research to chase down the tags and album art. I guess its become a hobby to organize it. I wish JRiver supported fingerprinting better as it would not only help people tag music and find duplicates more accurately, but it would allow all of us to contribute to each other and the greater music world with our awesome collections. Maybe AcoustID.org would be good for that. They are open-source. Anecdotally, it works pretty well. It works with several clients. I need to learn more about it.

Ideally (I think), I want JRiver to (optionally) scan for AcoustID when it "analyzes audio". Then store that data in a tag. We could use it to find tags, duplicates, maybe other stuff. Then (with opt in) we could share well-curated databases, perhaps with other JRiver users, perhaps with the AcoustID database. This would be a thing for a future version of JRiver as I think it would be a big version upgrade selling point. I am not even formally requesting it yet as there is much I don't know re: both privacy factors and JRiver's own best interests.

For now, I would like a way of right clicking on a file and sending it direct to Picard or some tool ("look up track info from online database" has not worked well for me) to get the fingerprint. I have intermediate computer skills so I just need to figure out how to do it. I haven't really figured out an efficient work flow yet as acoustic fingerprinting is new to me (and yay, time scarcity!). Maybe there is a way to configure "right click" -> Links -> AcoustID? Or Send to -> Send To (External) -> Picard?

Sorry so long and rambly. Its late and its been a hard day. Both of you have helped me in the past in more ways than you can know and I thank you again!

[RoderickGI]

You are helping other users if you select a file, right-click on it and select "Library Tools > Submit track info to online database". That will send your Track metadata to the JRiver Database, YADB, and Jim tells me that does use an Acoustic Fingerprint, but it just isn't exposed to users anywhere. When someone looks up a Track (not an Album), then MC should use the same Acoustic Fingerprint to match the file, I presume.

If everyone selected all their individual tracks and ran the "Library Tools > Submit track info to online database", instead of just submitting Album metadata when they rip CDs, the YADB Track lookup function would work a whole lot better.

You could set up a Link in "Manage Links" which show in the top right corner of MC Standard View, which searched the MusicBrainz site for the track you are looking for. That would require a bit of setup, but could at least identify the track for you, possibly. But that isn't going to update file tags for you. So yes, possibly use Send-To to send a track to MusicBrainz Picard. I haven't looked into that though as I just work directly in MBP to search for and update tags of files.

Anyway, if you become an expert on this topic, you can share it back to the community. Excellent!

[JimH]

You are helping other users if you select a file, right-click on it and select "Library Tools > Submit track info to online database". That will send your Track metadata to the JRiver Database, YADB, and Jim tells me that does use an Acoustic Fingerprint, but it just isn't exposed to users anywhere. When someone looks up a Track (not an Album), then MC should use the same Acoustic Fingerprint to match the file, I presume.

I'm not sure what you mean by "exposed to users".  You can submit to it or look up from it.

Try it by submitting a track, removing some of the metadata, and looking it up.

The problem is probably that we never publicized it enough to get users to build a very large database.

If you decide to submit many tracks, try to be sure they are well tagged.

[RoderickGI]

I'm not sure what you mean by "exposed to users".  You can submit to it or look up from it.

Maybe I worded that badly. I was referring to the Acoustic Fingerprint being exposed to users, not the YADB, and I was directly quoting you Jim.

MC can do an audio fingerprint.  It's been used for track lookup for many versions.  It isn't otherwise exposed to users.

I can't find any evidence that any Acoustic Fingerprint is stored in a MC field anywhere, even in hidden fields. Therefore, as you say MC can do an Acoustic Fingerprint, it isn't saved in any location a user can look at. Therefore, I assume it is created at lookup time, compared to Acoustic Fingerprints stored on YADB, and then discarded. It isn't something a user can look up or put into a View.

That is all.

The problem is probably that we never publicized it enough to get users to build a very large database.

Which is why I am encouraging BigCat to submit his unique tracks. 

[BigCat]

Honestly I didn't realize JRiver "look up track info from online database" works the way it does and that you can theoretically look up individual files. So far most tracks I have looked up it has never seen before (admittedly a very small sample size). It warns that it will change your tags without letting you look at the changes first (if I am understanding that message). What if I mess up and upload a track that is NOT tagged right? I am not sure what would happen, but it makes me reluctant to upload files, as it appears other users can't screen out mistakes. The one track it recognized was Scorpions - Rock You Like a Hurricane (most of my tracks are not this mainstream). It changed the album from "Love at First Sting" (the original album) to "Best of Rockers 'N' Ballads".

On Picard you can look at possible matches before committing to one (though I don't really care for Picard's UI). Picard, or I guess AcoustID, has a huge and open source database that works with multiple programs.

I think its cool that JRiver can at least do as much as it can. Like I said, when I have time I will try to figure out a way to send files to the external program for fingerprinting. If someone has advice on that I am all ears. I tried a long time ago to "send to" files to mp3gain.exe and I couldn't get it to work. I probably got the "parameters" wrong.

Again, thanks to all on this continuing endeavor! Audio fingerprinting seems to have come a long way!

[RoderickGI]

If you look up just one track and it changes tags to the wrong thing, as it did for your "Love at First Sting" track, you can press Ctrl-Z to undo the changes.

The rest I shall leave to you to investigate. Although I will say that the "Send-To" and executable works. I use that for converting recorded TV JTV files to TS.

[Moe]

BigCat, you have a PM.

[broncodan]

Ii have a very large library  (141k+ tracks) of well-tagged items.  Many of them have a PUID tag already and I would be glad to share these with JRiver but I would not do them individually (although I can see I can select multiple files and send at the same time).  But maybe there is a better way to share this information?  What information/fields are sent to the DB from the track info?